


Battle Cry

by sibley (ferns)



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Multi, Snowball Fight, happy fun times with just a LITTLE sadness, unconventional snowball fight rules
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 03:47:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16778983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: Cisco's fighting blind, but that won't stop him from doing what it takes to win this war.





	Battle Cry

**Author's Note:**

> Very soft and not my usual speed at all, but Hannukah is approaching quickly since it's super early this year and I just got back from Chicago, where there was quite a bit of snow (okay, it was like 5 flakes, but that's more than I'm used to getting!) and I had to get this out of my system.

Cisco’s fighting blind. He’s got basically no access to his powers and he’s freezing cold, crouched behind the wall he’s shored up with sticks and rocks to make it nice and sturdy and firm. It’s tall enough to shield him and thick enough to absorb damage, but there’s not much else that he can do, not while there’s a risk of being hit if he peeks his head over the top of the wall.

The constant barrage lets up for just a moment, and Cisco peeks up just in time to see two other heads duck back down. But if they’re hiding, then who’s-

“Barry’s open!” A voice shouts from the middle of the battlefield, and Cisco flings his ready-made snowball across the park.

Barry dodges it just in time with a shriek of “Corpses can’t talk, Ralph!” and Cisco watches mournfully as his perfect missile splatters harmlessly into the snowbank behind Barry’s own little snow wall. He himself ducks away from Caitlin’s snowball, but it falls short anyway, landing square in the middle of his sturdy barrier.

“Sorry!” Ralph yells.

Cisco shoots him a thumbs up over the top of his wall. “Thanks!”

Two more snowballs hit the front of his snow house, and he starts frantically scraping more together. It’s not _fair_ that Barry and Iris and Nora’s team has _three whole_ _people_ on it, or at least it did before Nora took a snow-bullet for her mother, while the rest of them have to make do with being on their own (since Sue declined to nearly automatically lose by putting herself on a team with Ralph). Maybe if Dante were here…

“Your technique could use some work,” Cecile informs somebody from the sidelines. She’s long since appointed herself as “Snowball God”, which means that she doesn’t get involved physically, but she _does_ insult them and cheer them on, plus playing referee when someone cheats. Which they all do. Often.

“If corpses can’t talk, Snowball Gods can’t talk either,” Ralph says from where he’s laying on his back on the battlefield. He was, of course, the first casualty. Caitlin got him so hard in the face with a snowball that they all actually heard it. Unlike Nora, who went to go drink her hot chocolate and cheer her parents on when she was eliminated, he decided to stay on the freezing cold and wet ground for unknown reasons.

“Never question my snowball fight authority again or I’ll revoke your babysitting privileges,” Cecile threatens, and Nora absently steadies her with one hand so that she doesn’t slip and fall off the icy picnic table she’s claimed as the throne of her Snowball God kingdom.

Ralph, being the only person on the planet who actually likes caring for newborn children that he didn’t physically give birth to, shuts up immediately. Cisco dumps some particularly icy snow over the wall onto his face.

“Who’s in the lead?” He calls, adding a newly uncovered muddy stick to his wall. Armando had been the one who taught him how to do that-just snow, no matter how compact, wasn’t strong enough to survive an onslaught of rocks if you didn’t know what you were doing (which none of his siblings did), so adding sticks and rocks was the only way to have any sort of structural integrity.

“Caitlin,” Cecile answers promptly. Cisco scowls at his wall but doesn’t dare peek over to see Caitlin’s smug face grinning at him. They’re not allowed to use their powers, but that doesn’t mean Caitlin’s lost her snowball aim. Give her a gun or something properly weighted and she’s hopeless, but a snowball is just unpredictable enough to make her a good shot. She was the one to hit both Ralph _and_ Nora.

“Sneak revenge attack!” Somebody shouts, and Cisco sticks his head over in time to see Sue popping her head out from behind a pile of snow and dumping a handful of ice loosely shaped into something that _could_ be called a ball if you squinted and crossed your eyes onto Caitlin’s head. She grins. “Not anymore, she isn’t.”

The three snowballs Cisco, Barry, and Iris throw in unison smash into her almost simultaneously, since it’s not exactly sneaky to _yell_ that you’re doing a sneak attack. Sue wipes the snow off her face, still beaming as she pulls clumps of ice out of her dark hair. Ralph abandons his dead body impersonation to drag her over to where Nora’s drinking her hot chocolate, literally wrapping around her when she complains about the cold water down her jacket.

Before Sue vanishes down Ralph’s purple coat entirely, she gives them all a thumbs up. “Worth it.”

Cisco squints over his wall at where Barry and Iris disappeared. It’s down to them. And he’s running out of snow nearby-the decision to make his wall so thick and sturdy had advantages when it came to defence, less so for offense. But Caitlin’s wall was pretty close to him… It would be less sturdy, but it was closer to Barry and Iris so he wouldn’t have to throw as far, and there would be more material…

Plus, since Barry wasn’t allowed to use his speed to cheat, Cisco might actually stand a chance of making it there before either of them hit him.

Before he can think about it too hard and talk himself out of it, Cisco jumps up and _sprints_ for the nearby shelter. Somebody cheers him on from the picnic table, and a snowball shoots past his head, barely missing his hair, and Cisco’s feet go out from under him as he skids the last yard to safety.

“Woo!” He chokes out, winded, and he scrambles into a crouch as Iris and Barry start their barrage on the front of Caitlin’s former fortress. Hastily packing some snow together, he flings it over the top of the wall, where it smacks into Barry’s hand as he pulls it back too late.

“Barry’s out!” Cecile calls, throwing her arms up and almost slipping again. Just like before, Nora catches her, and when she slips too far to that side, Caitlin (who positioned herself on Cecile’s other side) reaches out to keep her balanced. Barry opens his mouth to argue, and she shakes her head. “No _buts,_ mister! I saw it hit you! Come be dead with your daughter!”

Sulkily, Barry stomps over to be a dead body with Nora, who pats his arm and hides her smile behind her cup of coffee. Honestly, Cisco’s a little surprised he hadn’t been taken out sooner. He’d assumed that the final battle would be between Caitlin and Iris. At least he got half of the equation right.

He’s sure Iris is back there right now, planning her revenge. He can sort of see the top of her dark blue hat over the edge of the wall, but it’s not enough to hit, and if he even got ready to throw Iris would just duck back down and he’d lose that sliver of fabric completely.

Cisco starts making snowballs just as Iris starts launching them. Evidently, Barry hadn’t had any qualms about _maybe,_ just a _little_ bit using his speed to make enough ammunition to outfit an army. But that must have come at the cost of some structural integrity for the wall the way that Cisco’s powerful fortress had left him with little suitable material for snowball building.

So maybe…

Carefully, Cisco pried a particularly large rock out of a patch of ice and started forming snow around it. He’d have to be really careful not to hit Iris, he would feel _terrible_ if she got hurt just because he wanted to win a stupid competition, but if he could time it just right…

The wall crumbles to pieces when the rock collides with it, sending snow flying into the air. Iris throws herself backward to avoid it, slipping a little in some ice, and the two of them fling snow at each other at exactly the same time. Cisco knocks Iris’s hat clean off and gets her in the face and Iris lands three hits to his chest by the time they’ve run out of snowballs.

They’re scrabbling to gather more snow for a second attack when they realize that they both technically managed to hit each other at the same time.

They stare at each other for a moment. There’s snow in Iris’s hair, the cold is starting to really sting at Cisco’s fingers through his gloves (since he finally bought a pair that weren’t fingerless for this, the worst winter Central City has seen in years, which is _probably_ Weather Wizard’s fault), his toes are numb, and he can almost hear Iris’s teeth chattering.

“So, uh, who won?” Cisco asks. It’s so cold he can practically _see_ the words hanging in the condensation from his breath.

Iris, dwarfed by Barry’s huge red coat, shrugs. “Rematch between just us?” She suggests. “Rock paper scissors? Make Cecile decide who won?”

At that last suggestion, they both turn to look at their referee/Snowball God, who grins viciously. Iris and Cisco simultaneously realize what’s about to happen, but they don’t have time to do anything more than brace themselves for the inevitable.

Cecile’s snowballs hit them both, adding more snow to Cisco’s hair and making Iris squeal as water gets down her coat. Cecile cheers from her slippery throne, and for the millionth time that day, she almost falls off, this time only saved by Barry and Nora’s literal lightning-fast reflexes. “I win!”

Nora laughs into her hand once Cecile is safe and runs over to pass her mom some hot chocolate. Cisco points at Cecile with Iris’s retrieved hat, which Iris snatches back two seconds later. “That was cheating! You weren’t even playing the game!”

“There’s no such thing as cheating when you’re a Snowball God,” Cecile sniffs, hands on her hips. She’d probably look a lot more imposing if she weren’t tiny and wearing extremely fluffy mittens and earmuffs, plus a thick grey coat that she _must_ have taken from Joe and an almost eye-burningly bright pink hat.

“It’s true. Sorry, Mom,” Nora agrees, still laughing even as she gives Iris a side hug. Cisco doesn’t miss the glowing smile Iris gives her in return. “Don’t be a sore loser, Cisco.”

Sensing that he’s going to lose this argument the same way that he had lost every snowball fight to Dante since they were kids even the battles that Cisco had _rightfully_ won, he sighs and stomps over to the picnic table. “Is there any hot chocolate left?”

Sue’s arm sticks out the top of Ralph’s jacket as she points to a free thermos. “No marshmallows,” she says, voice muffled, and Ralph adjusts his position so that Sue’s head can pop out of the collar of the coat. “And no whipped cream. Take the remaining quality of it as you will.”

“I think it’s good,” Nora defends, and Cisco suddenly remembers that Iris was the one who made it. Which makes him approach it with a little bit more hesitation, though he tries not to let Iris see. Cecile’s drinking hers without any hint of fear, at least, which bodes well. Cisco’s just watched Iris burn water too many times to accept it without at least a little bit of trepidation, okay?

Luckily, it tastes fine. Really good, actually. And even if it didn’t, it warms him up enough for him to be happy drinking it anyway, and he sips it as they all slowly scatter like everybody else has just now realized that they don’t really have much of a reason to be here, feeling a little lost.

Nora goes with Cecile, not her parents, following her back toward Cecile’s car, since it’s dangerous to run on ice in general, especially when the roads are nothing _but_ ice (though it’s not exactly super safe to drive, either). Caitlin goes alone, opting to walk since her apartment building isn’t very far away. Close enough that her and Cisco used to come to this park all the time with Ronnie. Ralph and Sue obviously leave together, Sue finally free from the confines of Raph’s coat.

Barry and Iris don’t leave, though. Cisco realizes about five minutes into their staring directly at him they might be waiting for him to go, and he takes an awkward step forward. “Uh…”

They immediately position themselves on either side of him, linking their arms through his, which honestly makes it a little hard to drink his hot chocolate. They lean in just enough to squish him between them, and for a moment Cisco can close his eyes and tilt his head back and pretend things are the same as they were before everything started going insane.

Kind of. Since he sorta met Barry for real when things started going insane. Even if he met Iris before that. So maybe it’s not so bad.

“You wanna come back to our place?” Iris offers, bumping him with her shoulder. He can hear the smile in her voice.

“Why did we do this?” He asks instead of answering the question. “We’re not kids. We’re not even normal people. I haven’t had a snowball fight since my brother died.” If they want to think he means Dante instead of Armando, that’s not his problem. _(Maybe if I_ told _them…)_

“Maybe it’s nice to pretend to be kids for awhile,” Barry suggests, ducking to avoid a branch hanging low over the sidewalk, laden with a thick layer of ice. “Or normal people. Sometimes it’s nice to just have fun without the world threatening to explode, or something.”

Cisco thinks about that as he unhooks his arm from Iris’s so he can hold her hand. He thinks about Dante and Armando and his powers and how they show him the world is as fleeting as a spiderweb. He thinks about Barry and Iris and how they’re trying to deal with their daughter from the future, something that would push _anyone_ off into the deep end. He thinks about Cecile, struggling to deal with the absence of powers that she barely even had. Caitlin and her repressed childhood trauma.

“We should do this more often,” Cisco decides, and bounces up on his toes to kiss Barry on the cheek, which almost makes him twist his ankle on a patch of ice. “I liked it. I think everyone else did, too.”

“So…” Barry starts, and Cisco tries not to laugh at how red his face is. “Do you want to…”

“Yeah, I do.” Cisco smiles, and Iris and Barry high five awkwardly and probably painfully behind him before squishing him even more between them. “I hope you’ve got some lunch there, I’m starving.”

Some more snow begins to fall, and now Cisco’s pretty sure the warmth in his chest isn’t just from the hot chocolate.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm augustheart on tumblr.


End file.
